AIPAC Works for the 1 Percent

Posted on Mar 4, 2012

Pre-emptive war, under post-Nuremberg law, is defined as a criminal act of aggression. George W. Bush, whose disregard for the rule of law was legend, went to the U.N. for a resolution to attack Iraq, although his interpretation of the U.N. resolution as justifying the invasion of Iraq had dubious legal merit. But in this current debate over war with Iran, that pretense of legality is ignored. Where is Israel’s U.N. resolution authorizing it to strike Iran? Why isn’t anyone demanding that Israel seek one? Why does the only discussion in the media and among political elites center around the questions of “Will Israel attack Iran?” “Can it successfully carry out an attack?” “What will happen if there is an attack?” The essential question is left unasked. Does Israel have the right to attack Iran? And here the answer is very, very clear. It does not.

These neoconservatives were too blind and too enamored of their own power to see what invading Afghanistan and Iraq would trigger; so too are they unable to comprehend the regional conflagration that would be unleashed by attacking Iran, what it would mean for us, for Israel, for our allies and for tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocents.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish,” the Bible warns.

And since our elites have no vision it is up to us. The uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Greece to Occupy Wall Street to our gathering outside AIPAC’s doors in Washington are the same primal struggle for sanity, peace and justice, for a world wrenched free from the grip of those who would destroy it. And the abject fawning of our political elite, including Barack Obama, before AIPAC and its bank account is yet another window into the moral bankruptcy of our political class, another sign that the formal mechanisms of power are useless and broken. Civil disobedience is all we have left. It is our patriotic duty. We are called to make the cries of mothers, fathers and children in the squalid refugee camps in Gaza, in the suburbs of Tehran and in the bleak industrial wastelands in Ohio heard. We are called to stand up before these forces of death, the purveyors of violence, those whose hearts have grown cold with hatred. We are called to embrace and defend life with intensity and passion if we are to survive as a species, if we are to save our planet from the ravages of corporate greed and the specter of endless and futile war.

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The Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, in his poem “Rypin,” translated by Peter Cole, examined what power, force and self-worship do to compassion, justice and human decency. Rypin was the Polish town his father escaped from during the pogroms.

These creatures in helmets and khakis,
I say to myself, aren’t Jews,
In the truest sense of the word. A Jew
Doesn’t dress himself up with weapons like jewelry,
Doesn’t believe in the barrel of a gun aimed at a target,
But in the thumb of the child who was shot at—
In the house through which he comes and goes,
Not in the charge that blows it apart.
The coarse soul and iron first
He scorns by nature.
He lifts his eyes not to the officer, or the soldier
With his finger on the trigger—but to justice,
And he cries out for compassion.
Therefore, he won’t steal land from its people
And will not starve them in camps.
The voice calling for expulsion
Is heard from the hoarse throat of the oppressor—
A sure sign that the Jew has entered a foreign country
And, like Umberto Saba, gone into hiding within his own city.
Because of voices like these, father
At age sixteen, with your family, you fled Rypin;
Now here Rypin is your son.

gerard——AIPAC retains the loyalty of the old timers who remember the founding
of Israel and the Arab war to wipe it out…......and it has the loyalty and support of a
hell of a lot of American Evangelical Christians and right-wing folks, Jewish and not.

I’ve hated AIPAC for a long, long time but I’m not gonna dismiss their level of
support until I’m sure they go under.

multichro….: Just a word from my considerable experience, to expand on your quote: ” AIPAC has already lost the support of the mainstream of Jewish-American thought among the under-40 crowd ...”
I have known many Jewish-American men and women over years of close assotiation, and BY FAR the majority OPPOSED AIPAC and did NOT support Israel’s occupation policies and its oppression of Palestians.

walt—hamas is a terrible piece of shit, but AIPAC doesn’t have the correct
answers for dealing with the problems facing Israel and they sure as hell don’t
have any sensible contribution to make about US policy choices.

there is no war of annihilation to be waged and there is no peace to be found by
further oppressing the Arabs ...either those under the endless occupation or
those who are Israeli citizens and are having their equal protection of the law
systematically stripped from them.

Israel can’t win by capitulating to the extremist Arabs and they can’t win by
capitulating to the extremist Jews.

AIPAC, like Hamas, has to change or be neutralized. AIPAC has already lost the
support of the mainstream of Jewish-American thought among the under-40
crowd and is mel…ting.

I’l be quite, quite pleased to see it go poof if it can’t completely overhaul it’s
dumb ass.

Hamas charter 1988 article 7
“The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!...”

This is Hamas which was voted in by the so called
palestinians of Gaza. So much for “occupation”
Hedges rambling incoherent nonsense is predictable
and tiresome. The problem with Israel is that it
actually takes leftists like Hedges seriously.
Any other country when faced with a racist enemy vowing to commit genocide would have annihilated such an enemy. I’m doubling my contribution to AIPAC.
And no, I’m not one of the 1%

in one of my earlier posts on this thread i said that aipak speaks for some ‘jews’.
and a lot more than one percent of them. i think it is more like 90% of them.
but i should have added that it represents wishes of most christians also. how
many of them? also 90%?

Whoa, hetero comes swooping in out of left field with a multi-paragraph response that isn’t bashing another commenter?? Imposter!

Maybe I’ve read too much Hedges but I’m getting a bit tired of the obligatory Sheldon Wolin reference followed by the incessant reminders of how much time he has spent covering the Middle East, Central Europe, etc. as a foreign correspondent. Still brings it with the badass Nietzsche quote though..

PS—the deeply imbedded “revanchist” attitudes and policies of AIPAC, (“We are not stealing their terrirory; we are taking our territory back.”)—like so much of the thinking of the 1% (and conservatism everywhere—is clear evidence (whether they are aware of it or not) of being out-dated, being passed by, being behind the times, redundant, dysfunctional etc. (“Stop the clock. I want to get off!”)
That creeping awareness helps account for the resident anger, resentment and resistance manifested toward change, reasonable optimism, and energy for innovation. IMO, of course, since I’ve never read anything to refer to as a source to back me up here. I’m speculating.

If the basic ideas and practices of nonviolent movements for politico/economic democracy continue to be studied, practiced and improved more and more extensively, they will become a significant and efficient method of operation that has definite, proven advantages over violence. Every success is a “giant leap for mankind.” Every failure is a learning experience, a chance for analysis and a light revealing new openings ahead. After all, the possibilities for success are 99 to 1 from the starting line, even though many of the 99 don’t realize that fact yet.

This week, as Binyamin Netanyahu flies in to
Washington to give his orders to the president to
support an Israeli attack upon Iran, there is
apparently nothing that the world, (or even 800
million ordinary Americans and Europeans), can do to prevent this global calamity.

The United Nations has been ignored and treated with contempt by both Israel and its servant, America. Together they will illegally attack Iran with F16 and F15 American supplied strike aircraft. Together they will deploy the most powerful bombs ever used, to decimate a sovereign state without any authority whatsoever, in order to maintain Israel’s illegitimate superiority in the Middle East. The bombing will obviously cause hundreds of deaths of Iranian civilians, and the inevitable reprisals will cause hundreds, or thousands, more in cities around the world.

A nuclear war in the Middle East would set world
peace and the global economy back, twenty years. No one can foresee the ultimate consequences that would be bound to affect the lives of every one of us, wherever we live, in London, Paris, New York or Tel Aviv, as well as in Tehran. This worldwide damage will be as a direct result of Israel’s policy of illegal expansion in its occupied territories which has already involved 500,000 illegal settlers in violation of the authority of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions.

So the international community awaits the
consequences of Netanyahu’s orders and the compliance of the US presidency with his outrageous and insolent demands for American, (and allied) soldiers to give their lives for his ideology. At no time since WW2 have so many been lives and livelihoods been potentially under the threat of war.

“If you gaze into the abyss”,Friedrick Nietzshe wrote,“the abyss gazes into you.”

Unquote
=========

A BRILLIANT quote,indeed,for those who can grasp what has been done to the people of the Middle East,since the secret and evil accord called “Sykes-Picot Accord” in 1916,while World War One had not ended yet.

Thank you,Chris Hedges,for your relentless chase to expose what should be exposed,not only to the American people,but to the people of the world.

You,Seymour Hersh and the like of you and Hersh are truly the CONSCIENCE of America….......

OK: agreed about organized religion which IMHO is a corporate structure just like any
other. I’ll say that Christianity has more blood on it’s hands than Islam, but Christianity did
have a 1000 year head-start(lol)! For the record, if I’m close to any organized religion, it’s
the Curch of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Salaam and stay thirsty my friend.

Reluctantly, I must agree with hetero chromatic, and disagree with Chris Hedges; AIAPC represent much more than the 1%.

During the beginnings of the “Arab Spring” Barbra Walters and Jone Rivers were ask what they thought of the changes taking place in the Middle East; both women declared (I paraphrase) that they could care less about the fate of the people of the region as long as Israel was safe and secure! These two seemly “nice ladies” would casually doom generations of young Muslims to a life under brutal Dictators like Mubarack; 400 million people in bondage so 8 million can feel safe.

As ugly as it may sound, heterochromatic is right; many Jews and Christians do agree with AIPAC. They control the whole of Congress; during the last election Obama , Clinton and McCain all showed up to out do one another at “boot licking”.

Where I disagree with heterochromatic is that AIPAC does not see the dictators in the middle east as a threat. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Kuwait, (the Arab League) are partners with Israel and the US in suppressing the Democratic will of the 400 million people of the region for the last 40 plus years.

the reason i say we need to use/generate less energy is because we would then have fewer
deaths/maimings in dangerous mines, on roads, in factories.
let’s face the fact that cars, airplanes, lots of gadgets are weapons and we need them like holes in our
heads.
if one is going to go on vacation, say, to hawaii, it makes lot of sense to take a rowboat and row to hawaii
or anywhere else.
you’d get, thus, exercise, companionship, evening gatherings on deck with singing, laughing, etc.
and there is always that overuse, overwaste, and overpollution when we have as much energy as we do.
k, i admit, i was once very ignorant. i also thought that we were progressing and that we all would have a
better life because some unseen, but very unselfish and enlightened, caring, respecting, loving people
were looking out for our well being.
no wonder i thought that way, having read only privately-owned newspapers! thanks

C. Hedges may not be aware that he is still demonizing Iran in this article by making references to its undemocratic rule. In view of his assertion that Iran has not committed violent acts against the US, and considering he believes in diplomacy, why must he point to Iran’s internal affairs? If anything, it would be more appropriate to remind us of the history of US meddling in Iran when the Shah was in power and S. Hussein was our friend.

AIPAC may be controlled and sustained by the 1% but its existence is due to most of the 99%. Our politicians and their supporters never discuss the issue. The country at large doesn’t seem to have any problem with AIPAC’s activities. It’s the same in Israel.

CC,
yes, i agree, christianity had done a lot of evil. but i’ve already said that numerous
times. so, this time, i decided not to repeat it once more.
unlike you, i affirm, that organized religions [not, belief in god, of course] are the
root of all evil that had befallen us thus far. thanks

While I agree that religion can certainly be a divisive force, promoting hatred, intolerance,
and bloodshed, I would argue that first, Christianity has far more blood on it’s hands than
Islam, and second, the fundamentalists of all faiths must warp their faith’s philosophies in
order to allow for violence. Islam according to the Quran is as peaceful as the New
Testament. The problem is not really religion, it’s geopolitics and decades of imperial
policy that’s coming home to roost.

Sorry,more twisted words about how bad the Iranian leadership is,twisted words of their figurehead President,stupid Israel friendly jabs at legitimate resistant groups,and the failure to put the total onus on US,GB,France and Israel,a collective desert of powerful lost minds.But hey,what else is new in this neolibcon narrative of BS,couched in horesehockey,all learned in that poison ivy league Zionist monster enclave.Ron Paul 2012!

talkmaster,
i am saying that islam is doing lots of evil. are you talking about that?
yes, iran is ruled by godologists! or one could say that iran is ruled by people who study god. [btw, can one encounter
anything more stupid than people studying god???]
it should be, i think, the other way around and we’d see iran stronger and much less divided. and, as more democratic, just,
etc., it could stand up to world 1% much better.
and all godologists thwart interdependent way of living, knowledge, sciences, justice, equality and not just those in arab
lands.
the difference between the sacerdotal class of iran and, say, the one in saudi arabia is that iranian clerics say nyet to world
1% and the saudi’s says yes to world 1% because it needs it badly in order to control own pop.
in short, ‘religions’ are divisive. they spread hatred, intolerance, etc.
===
and if the West one day attacks iran, it would have been iranian theocrats who’d be most responsible for it.
they should not nearly all alone confront the west or world 1%. iran can only lose in any confrontation with US&company;.
so, it is time for ahmadinejad to finally shut up about holocaust, US, israel. if you want to destroy israel as a jewish state or
its one percent, you don’t say it, you do it if you can.
but iran and even allied with russia and china cannot do it.
==
and i am not happy with building nuclear plants at this time. perhaps in centuries and perhaps never. we actually need less
energy and not more!

Thank you for another well crafted and thought-provolking article. But to business.

Among the other things the 1%ers grind down is the understanding of history - I guess
if you’re out to subvert a civilization, having a population with an understanding of the past
is somewhat dicey (they tend to ask uncomfortable questions). It’s far easier to establish a
Brave New World and keep ‘em watching Fox and drinking Blue Ribbon.Yet, while history
doesn’t repeat itself, it does rhyme from time to time. If Von Clausewitz were resurrected, I
think he’d despair over how it seems that none of today’s ruling elites have read Von
Krieg. Once you commit to the use of military force in the service of your strategic
objectives, even if you have the most advanced armed forces in history, you still loose
control. Incidentally, it’s very telling that this is exactly what the generals of this advanced
force, people who have spent their lives planning such operations as war against Iran, are
warning their political masters about the operational dangers involved. I suspect that
Israeli generals are saying the same things. Unfortunately, theirs not to reason why.

Along with the moral argument against war that you vividly describe, there is also a
practical argument. Diplomacy, while often slow, can be controlled, while war cannot.
Forgive a curling analogy, but diplomacy is like a good skip: they know how throw the
stone, curl it just right, and direct the sweeps. War, on the other hand, is Russian
Roulette. Example: every war in history!

So what to do? You sound a clarion call for civil disobedience and I greatly fear that this
is a last stand, though I sincerely hope it isn’t. But if it’s all we have left, damn you, you’ve
convinced me.

AIPAC is extremely right-wing and totally wrong, but it represents the opinions
of a hell of a lot more than 1% of the US population.

Hedges may have lived in the Middle East for years and seen how fucked-up it
is, but he ignores that it WAS fucked-up for long before we got there and long
before there was an AIPAC or an Israel.

being the semi-sane and goodhearted person that he is, he expects that there
should be a pony for everyone by tomorrow morning, but, unfortunately, the
impossible takes a little longer and there will be but slow and difficult changes
in the Middle East.

AIPAC is an impediment to that change, and they are difficult to stomach. but
they stand for a great number of Americans who take a very cold and hard look
at the autocratic governance of the Arab League states, the persistence of
miseducation and ignorance and hatred instilled in the citizens of the Middle
East by those autocrats, the record of ugly actions and opinions coming from
those states, and just are unwilling to trust in the good intentions of the people
there.

AIPAC is wrong and it’s extreme but it represents a lot of people and a little bit
of reality.

If Iran is bombed to destroy their nuclear weapons capability, what’s to say they can’t use other methods such as chemical or biological, if they were so hell bent on destroying Israel, as the NeoCons say. Bombing their nuclear facilites does not remove the alleged ‘existential threat’ to Israel, so let’s not kid outselves that nuclear facilities are the sole target. The fact is that Israel wants to wipe Iran off the face of the earth, and they might take the rest of us with them.

Iran is publicly being threatened with war and their economic survival is being threatened by the economic terrorism of draconian sanctions. A cornered animal does not slink away and the Neocons know it. Their goal isn’t just to dismantle the nuclear program. They are deliberately trying to provoke a reaction to justify all-out war. They live and breath for it.

I agree, balkas. The determining factor throughout history of who is and isn’t civilized has been who had the most advanced weaponry or largest armies.

When any such civilization gets destroyed, their culture as well as all their acquired knowledge is destroyed and consigned to the memory hole of history. Then they are deceptively renamed a “backward”, “pre-industrial” or “developing” nation that is in need of “humanitarian aid”, free market “reforms” or “democratic reforms”, all of which have less to do with democracy than capitalistic hegemony. And no one is the wiser save the perps.

Many still want to believe this is the “best country in the world”, but this pipe dream is detrimental to and highly subversive to any real change.

Anyone can write articles until they are blue in the face, but unless they start to tackle the “tyranny of background assumptions”, they are dead in the water.

CH: “.....ensuring that the muslim world remains submissive and compliant”. yes, but not just to
US 1%. nato wars against muslim lands ensures that muslim world—and i think CH would
agree—remains subservient and obedient also to the muslim and world 1%.
that’s why US, France, and UK had to destroy libyan govt and install there a theocracy.
it was a warning to any land and not just muslim that disobedience can bring death and
destruction. but once again we can see how much evil an ideology called “islam” can do.
don’t be surprised if taliban become once again allies of the world 1%.
in short, from freedom fighters of late 80s to terrorists in ‘01 and back to freedom and
democracy keepers in, say, ‘15. thanks

CH: “we have not brought democracy and virtues of western civilization to the muslim
world”.
western world ever been civilized? then, if it had been civilized, why two hundred-year,
thirty-year, napoleon, franco-prussian, w1, w2, nato-korean, nato-afghan, nato-vietnam,
nato-iraq, euro-palestinian, many colonial wars?
i wonder if CH meant that we were more advanced in tool making and use of energy; such
as coal, and fossil fuels? and that would represent a civilization to him?
but even so, all that was much destructive to the environment and individual freedoms,
peace, etc.

and it seems to me that because of our ‘progress’, we are now in greater perils and
bondage to the clero-noble class of people than ever in known history.

i say, we would never have been in such a mess as we are now, if it hadn’t been for the fact
that we have been highly uncivilized and not civilized as CH tacitly posits.
or was he talking too fast and thus also thinking faster than he ought to have? thanks
bozhidar b, planet earth

CH: “powerful never bound by law”. but who had written the laws, but the
powerful? and they are devoted to and bound by their own laws.
only they write, interpret, and execute ALL laws [or ‘laws’=diktats]

the label “nationalism” stands as an overgeneralized term. it cannot be understood.
so, i aver, danilo kish, did not know what he was talking about. now, the label “ethnocentrism” is quite a bit closer to
reality and as such should never be confused with nationalism, let alone imperialism [theft of other peoples’ land, sea,
peace of mind, etc.]
at present panhuman development, there is nothing wrong with ethnocentrism or even some nationalisms.
imperialism is always wrong—nationalism perhaps not always—if ever—it would depend on how people think about it.
whether a nationalism is wrong or evil would depend, first of all, on degree of imperialism, number of a military alliances,
education in allied lands, etc.
[btw, can we ever cleanly split ethnocentrism from nationalism? i say, no, we cannot]
if we would look at slovak nationalism in the early nineties and slovakia separating from czechoslovakia, i do not think
that that was even wrong let alone criminal.
on the other hand, swedish and slovak nationalisms in fourties had been at least wrong when they did not fight nazis.
on the other hand, latvian, estonian, lithuanian, croatian, serb nationalisms in the ‘40s were actually evil.
i am not surprised that CH does not know this. he, too, had been made in america; i guess, its ‘education’ blinds just
about everyone in america. thanks

CH: “elites have no vision”. i think ‘elites’ [read, please greatest criminal minds] do have a vision [and
define it in any way you like] and they always had.
it never changes. the vision or aim is to keep majority of people totally powerless on politico-
military-monetary-educational level.
bible, or to be more exact, its scribblers, also had a vision: help ‘nobles’ [landowners] oppress their
own slaves and serfs.
in those days ‘nobles’ owned everything. that was ok even with jesus. he only condemned [if one is
to believe the scribes] money changers, but never the causes for poverty.
let’s note please that jesus was not killed because he opposed imperialism, slavery, serfdom, legal
thefts—he had been eliminated because he was starting a new cult.
and sanhedrin’s cult could not stand it. however, the cult, itself, was not put out completely and
later spread among european and other lands.
thanks

“inverted totalitarianism”, yes, that’s true. i long ago thought that what i saw in the
US may be deemed diktatorship of the 1%.
there is no limit to its power and not only because it owns, say, 95% of america,
but also because it has private police, private army, and private spy agencies.
==
however, in my experience, aipac does speak for lots of ‘jews’. i also think that the
white ‘jews’ are using most of the mizrahic jews [they actually are shemitic and
probably real judeans or jews] to slaughter many other shemites and to steal land
from them. thanks

Has Netanyahu talked with the fathers, mothers, wives, brothers and sisters of the soldiers who may die in the contest with Iran?
Has he visited their homes to see what emptiness will be there when they are gone? Has Netanyahu recently visited cities reduced to piles of rubble by sustained air strikes?
To be sure, Iran will sustain far worse devastation, not only from Israel, but also from the U.S. This does not change the likelihood, however, that both countries will also sustain damage in one form or another.
When Abe Lincoln advised his clients to settle whenever possible, he did so not only because it ends the dispute and uncertainty, but also because in a public trial a client often loses even when he wins the underlying case. BP understood this well last week, which is why it settled. It thus put the loss behind it and is now moving forward.
In the same way, Israel, as a modern nation should think of smart ways to deal with Iran. Indeed, keen understanding of human nature has been the great asset of the Jews, which has helped them finesse through predominately Christian or Muslim countries.
Why then has war now become the only option? Even when you become good at it, any battle entails losses.
And here is another point. Just as in time Iran might acquire nuclear weapons, it might also abandon them. Libya did, and so did South Africa. Perhaps North Korea would also, though no one is holding his breath.
Not these guys, you say. Perhaps.
But was it not in Iran where Arab Spring had its roots—in the protests that followed the 2009 disputed election. Yes, the hardliners have put out all those flames. The hot coals are still there, however, smoldering in the ashes. Such is the resiliency of the human spirit, and as we see it now in Syria.
Let’s assume, however, that Iran, as expected, becomes an insufferable bully. Surely, we have dealt with bullies before—and the Jews have dealt with them throughout the centuries. Recent history shows that bullies do not last forever, and have an unkind end lately. Thus if Iran was to become an insufferable bully with its nuclear knowledge, it will only be pushed further into isolation in an increasingly interconnected world.
If none of this convinces us to put aside our war drums, maybe we should recall the story of the captain and his mate who were about to be executed by the pirates.
“Let us live for six months,” the captain told them boldly,” and we will train your dog to talk.”
“How we’re gonna do that,” the mate whispered?
The captain replied:
“In six months we may die.
The pirates may die.
Or the dog may talk.”